For the catering industry, 2020 is a year of rapid innovation and adaptation in the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout the year, restrictions across the country were tightened and relaxed, forcing brands to adjust their business models at an unprecedented speed in order to survive. Now, in 2021, in the face of supply issues, high third-party delivery costs, and difficulty in staffing, the industry’s focus is no longer on adaptation, but more on improving operations and regaining profits, all of which have a negative impact on the bottom line. pressure.
Therefore, many chain stores are focusing on creating and maintaining online ordering platforms, introducing mobile applications, and motivating customers to return through customizable loyalty programs and targeted digital marketing activities. However, restaurants now manage more channels than ever before, and they need to exist in drive-thru, takeaway, delivery and online ordering, as well as newly opened restaurants, which makes managing these projects more challenging. Although restaurants have turned to technology to simplify these initiatives, finding all the resources they need on one platform has traditionally been difficult, especially for small and medium-sized brands.
Just ask Justin Egan, the chief marketing officer and co-founder of Wing It On!, a growing North Carolina fast-service chicken brand with eight physical stores in six states. Egan stated that although the brand’s leader (the brand first opened in 2011 and started franchising in 2014) knows that its customer base is adopting online and mobile ordering, the technology is useful for small brands that don’t have enough funds to develop for themselves. Say it is out of reach or hire a supplier to build it. When they finally launched a mobile app in 2018, it could only list business hours and locations, and provide guests with photos of dishes.
"We decided that we needed something more user-friendly to provide the Wing It On brand! Experience and features can not only manage digital orders, but also help us connect with customers and drive digital revenue without excessive manual maintenance," Egan said.
This is the time for Wing It On! Turn to Incentivio, an all-in-one digital platform that helps restaurants manage marketing, branded mobile apps and online ordering, loyalty programs, delivery, gift cards, curbside pickup, and customer databases.
"The introduction of online and mobile ordering fully integrated with our POS was the real reason that initially attracted us to use Incentivio," Egan said. "The platform is very powerful and provides a lot of powerful functions for restaurants. These functions usually require integration, payment and management of multiple platforms, databases and suppliers. We can manage our mobile and online ordering and loyalty programs on one platform. , Push notifications, rewards, and the platform also provides a machine learning-driven marketing engine. This has changed the rules of the game on many levels for us.”
Incentivio's implementation director Rich Long was previously a client of Incentivio and served as the IT director of several different restaurants in the fast service, leisure and full service areas. He said he knew directly how troublesome it is to manage so many different systems.
“When you maintain multiple systems for data, online and mobile ordering, loyalty programs, etc., your entire ecosystem will have errors,” Long said. "This is usually because if you change something in one place-such as an item you provide in an online ordering system-you may forget to change it elsewhere. Put all these systems on one platform and one database You can reduce errors and save time and money, while you can also create a single source of information to integrate all reports."
Egan said that Incentivio has smoothed the management company's loyalty program. Guests get rewards based on their orders and behaviors, such as referring friends. Every time the brand launches a new LTO, Incentivio will let Wing It On! Announce new products via push notifications and emails.
"Incentivio allows us to create a digital experience that is convenient and easy for our fans and easy to manage for our company; our franchisees are often surprised by the services we can provide through this system," Egan said . "In fact, we even saw candidates who gave up franchise rights in the past come back to sign a franchise agreement with us because we used Incentivio."
The system not only helped save Wing It On! Time and through the built-in marketing tools to generate sales, but the chain is now also using Incentivio's new independent recommendation engine. This new reminder up-selling tool uses past data to understand which side dishes, desserts and drinks are usually ordered with items in the center of the plate, and what items are already in the customer’s shopping cart to make smart recommendations and help Restaurants increase revenue and increase the average check size. "Just by turning on this feature, we saw a 4% increase in digital revenue automatically driven by the upsell engine-we can start seeing results without having to move our fingers," Egan said.
"In 2020, the restaurant industry must become lean," Long said. "You can no longer have a 25-person IT department and a three-layer deep operations team, so the more restaurants you can simplify, the better. By integrating all these tools into an easy-to-use but powerful platform, all sizes All restaurants have access to the technology they need to increase efficiency, save time, and drive sales without spending millions of dollars in IT budgets."
Long added that only through the new upsell recommendation engine, some of Incentivio's customers generate automated incremental revenue each month that exceeds the cost of the entire Incentivio platform.
"As an emerging brand, because of our digital presence, it actually thrived during the pandemic, and it is difficult to find a technology partner that is also thriving and innovative," Egan said. "During this time, we feel that we have the ability to make Incentivio a partner. They never give up. This really emphasizes the importance of choosing the right supplier partner to spend the most difficult time with you. Wing It On! The future is bright and we are expected to have 100 stores by 2024. We know that Incentivio can expand rapidly with us, and we are very happy to continue our relationship."
To learn more about how Incentivio can help your restaurant grow, visit the company's website.
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